Manchester City Dominate June 2022 List Of Most Valuable Players

Premier League champions Manchester City have dominated CIES Football Observatory’s latest list of the world’s most valuable soccer players.

The International Centre for Sports Studies (CIES) in Switzerland makes the list every six months, based mainly on players’ ability, the strength of their parent club, their age and contract length.

Thirteen of the top 100 players on the June 2022 list are classed as Manchester City players, with new signing Julian Alvarez also on the list as a player for Argentine club River Plate.

Real Madrid have the second highest number of players on the list, some way behind City with eight players. Barcelona have seven players in the top 100, and both Bayern Munich and Chelsea have six.

New Manchester City striker Erling Haaland is seen as the third most valuable player in the world, behind Paris Saint-Germain’s Kylian Mbappe and Real Madrid’s Vinicius Junior.

Mbappe, who has just signed a new contract with PSG, is valued at around $220 million; Vinicius Junior is valued at $198 million, and Haaland at $163 million.

Manchester City’s Phil Foden and defender Ruben Dias are also among the top ten most valuable players in the world, and the sheer number of really valuable players that City have shows how they’ve managed to secure top young players on long term contracts, and suggests they will be a dominant force in world soccer over the next several years at least.

Their closest Premier League rivals Liverpool by contrast only have five players on the list. Liverpool’s title-winning front three of Mohamed Salah, Sadio Mane and Roberto Firmino are around 30 years old and approaching the end of their contracts, and this is reflected by Salah being number 81 on the list, and Mane and Firmino both being outside the top 100. The most valuable Liverpool player is new signing Luis Diaz, who is eighth on the list with a value of around $117 million.

As well as Manchester City, Barcelona also have three players in the top ten including 19-year-old midfielder Pedri, who is ranked the fourth most valuable player in the world at $144 million. With seven players on the list overall, Barcelona seem to have made good progress with their rebuild.

Manchester United players on the other hand have lost a lot of value after the club’s poor showing last season. United had three top-ten players in June 2021, but have no players in the top ten this time around.

Striker Marcus Rashford has seen his value drop dramatically following his and Manchester United’s poor form over the past 12 months. He was seen as the third most valuable player in June 2021, but just one year later, he isn’t even in the top 100.

And as if to show how quickly a player’s transfer value can fall as they get older, the top 100 doesn’t contain a single player who has come in the top-three finalists for the the Ballon d’Or, often seen as soccer’s top individual award.

Due to their age and contract situations, not only do Lionel Messi and Cristiano Ronaldo fail to break the top 100 most valuable players, but neither do Neymar, Liverpool’s Virgil Van Dijk, Chelsea midfielder Jorginho or Bayern Munich’s Robert Lewandowski.

While that might show some of the limitations of such lists, it also hints at which players have the best shot of winning the Ballon d’Or in the future.